‘Novacane’ is a song taken from R&B artist Frank Ocean’s 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, ULTRA. The song’s lyrics paint a narrative in which Frank encounters a nameless woman who studies dentistry, while starring in adult films to fund her tuition fees. The woman offers Frank novocaine, a drug used to numb pain. Throughout the song, Ocean’s relationship with this woman leads him down a spiral of drug use and numbing agents from which he feels he cannot escape, and which takes control of his life. Novacane offers a dour and heart-wrenching portrayal of heavy drug-usage, and the causes behind such.
The music video for Novacane expertly combines performance with narrative to illustrate the toll that the excessive drug use has taken on Ocean’s life. Interestingly, the narrative presented in the music video is not a direct visual telling of the lyrics, but more of a follow-up from the story that Ocean tells through his lyrics. From this perspective, the music video shows Ocean retrospectively describing to the viewer, the story of how he got to this point.
The music video opens on a dark apartment interior. Through the slow-panning camera movement, a beautiful woman is revealed, seated on a chair, however she quickly dissolves into a cloud of smoke. Panning further, Frank Ocean is revealed, sitting alone in the middle of three chairs, smoke surrounding him. Ocean takes a puff of what appears to be a cannabis joint, at which point two more beautiful women materialise around him from the smoke. Consequently, Ocean’s expression also drops, displaying no emotion. This also references the song’s lyric: ‘zero emotion, muted emotion.’
This introduction is not only an impressive visual effect, but is used also as a powerful storytelling tool. Through this short visual, it is implied that Ocean loads himself with drugs for the euphoric, yet short-lived highs, despite not showing signs of actually being happy with his lifestyle. The women around him disappear once more, and Ocean then repeatedly intakes the drug to resurrect his high.
The camera movement begins to unveil more of the apartment setting, revealing a wealth of expensive decor and furniture. It is most likely that this is in-fact a hotel, and not a permanent residence, suggesting the impermanent, transitory nature of Ocean’s lifestyle. It is at this point in the video where the performance element is introduced. Ocean is found seated in front of a bed.
At this point, the use of colour in this music video should be examined. The video is graded to have a noticeably green palette. On top of this, Ocean is wearing a shirt with green patterns printed across it, and all of the smoke visualised in the video is of a green shade, also. The likely implication being made by this is that green is the colour most often associated with cannabis, and therefore, casual drug use.
The final half of the music video consists of a performance by Ocean. He sings the lyrics directly into the camera without a shade of emotion. Alongside this, his mouth is drooped down, and gradually falls lower and lower as Ocean is consumed by the drugs. Ocean then begins to rub Topicaine across his face, a form of topical novocaine. Upon doing this, Ocean is confronted once more with hallucinations of women surrounding him, joined by imagery of rainforests, panda bears and white tigers. Throughout this, Ocean presents no signs of experiencing joy or even satisfaction, and instead continues to apply the novocaine to make himself more and more numb.
Continuing to apply the topicaine, the camera stutters and Ocean’s face begins to distort in an exaggeratory fashion, becoming increasingly affected by the drug use. The frame is also now filled with hallucinatory images and smoke, to which Ocean pays no attention. The camera also moves in-and-out of focus. The frame also becomes darker, and the level of green tint steadily rises. The use of visual effects coupled with simple camera movements during this short sequence makes for powerful imagery which demonstrates Ocean’s mental state. These effects are also well-demonstrated through Ocean’s performance, as his delivery becomes more-and-more slurred with each lyric.
The level of distortion through both camera and visual effects increases to a point at which it reaches its climax. As Ocean is about to break out once more into the song’s chorus, he is slapped across the face by an unseen woman, at which point the music cuts out and the hallucinations disappear. The fact that all we see of this woman is her hand speaks to the intimacy of the music video to Ocean himself. It also suggests that Ocean is not paying attention to the woman, and she is much like another hallucination to him. This also paints a bold picture of the effects of heavy drug reliance. We, as an audience, were not aware of anyone around Ocean, or being affected by his actions, and it is suggested that he himself has not considered such. The slap, however, illustrates the frustrations of those around Ocean toward his behaviour, and represents the effects that his actions have on others, while Ocean is oblivious to this, and is totally numbed by his novocaine.
Frank Ocean is ‘snapped out of’ his hallucinations, and his image fades out, until all that is left is an image of smoke, with a green tint. We finally fade out on a dark and abrupt note, with no narrative resolution to Ocean’s struggle, seemingly finding himself in an endless cycle of drug intake and numbness.
In conclusion, the music video for Frank Ocean’s Novacane is a masterful example of how visuals can be manipulated to not only compliment a musical piece, but to extend its meaning and build on its narrative, if applicable. The video takes place in one, confined set, however use of camera, colour grading and simple visual effects paint a minimalist and painfully effective picture of how this song should be represented through the visual medium.
